Tag Archives: eating disorders

Which emotion(s) — joy, envy, rage, pity, or something else — do you find to be the hardest to contain?

I have become very good at masking stress, sadness or anger externally; however internally these negative emotions take their toll on me; in terms of my inclination to channel these negative emotions into making poor food choices. On the upside, I have over the years and a lot of soul searching, gotten better at not giving into those destructive urges. I have had a few epiphanies; the most profound is that even at my lowest weight, I was never happy with myself. The second epiphany is that I no longer have the will, the stamina or the discipline to actually be anorexic and thank goodness for that. That is probably the best thing to have happened to me during the process of getting older and wiser. The distorted imagery that resides in my brain hasn’t gone away, but my internal response system has become much more lax and my attitude is much more forgiving. I have to say that my forgiving attitude towards myself is a huge deal; it has helped me relax and have a nicer internal dialogue with myself. It is amazing just how much we actually talk to ourselves and how some of us are really, really mean to ourselves. It is scary because it is so one-sided and always harmful to the person and the saddest aspect is that the person never gets a proper defense against their internal prosecutor because in their mind they deserve their internal dialogue no matter how wrong-headed and undeserved it is. I am learning to be kinder to myself and my biggest aim in life is to have my two children be as kind to themselves as possible.

On the other hand, I have a very hard time containing feelings of intense joy, happiness or frivolity. I am famous for spontaneous outbursts of laughter. My daughter has recorded my laughter just because it makes her friends laugh; I think it’s because my laugh is full throated and sincere, not at all wishy-washy or half-hearted. My daughter has told me that whenever she and her friends are be upstairs in her room hanging out, a loud sound would interrupt their conversations and her friends would ask what that noise was and my daughter would matter of factly answer “oh that’s my maman” and they would start to laugh. Essentially my daughter was telling me that my laughter is contagious.

My husband has told me the same thing, but it’s kind of another thing when your daughter records your laughter for the sole purpose of having an instant laugh track. I love it. :D

Write 500 words on any topic you like. Now remove half the words, without changing the essence of what you’re saying.

I haven’t written much about my challenges with anorexia nervosa, you would think that I would since it is as much a part of me and my mindset as is my need for approval. Eating disorders are so complicated, to describe and to diagnose, unfortunately. No one ever wakes up and says “today I will develop an eating disorder” It is so insidious in the making, it is frightening. I decided after my freshman year of college, where I was utterly miserable away from home in Albany New York, upon transferring to a school close to home that I needed to lose weight. Being the good student that I was, I read about ways to lose weight and exercise was one of the tools, forgoing fat and sugar was another, eating smaller portions and then I found other ways as well. Increasing exercise to several times a day, restricting caloric intake to 1000 calories a day and then the piece de resistance, eating sugarless gum when you are hungry does two things, keeps your mind otherwise occupied from thinking of food since your salivary glands are theoretically at work and the sugar substitute is indigestible so it builds up in your intestines and when you actually eat food, it impedes its digestion and forces it through your system so it becomes an effective diuretic. All of these strategies are what I learned simply by reading health magazines, lack of knowledge and information can be dangerous. What made the information so dangerous is that I didn’t have the knowledge that I was suffering from an eating disorder and that my body image was so beyond warped that I was basically putting my life in danger.I weighed myself on a daily basis and the only thing that registered in my head was that I could lose five more pounds, this continued despite seeing the numbers, 105, 102, 96, 92 and so on. I was at my worst in London where I used to go to Euston Station to weigh myself at the scale, I had to translate stones into pounds and it worked out into 87 pounds. I’m 5 foot 6 so I was perilously skinny and I couldn’t see it. After London I had to go to France to see my family who hadn’t seen me since the summer before when I had weighed 125 pounds, needless to say that they were in complete shock. My tantine immediately took me to the doctor because they were convinced that I was suffering from some type of wasting disease, ironically they were correct, just the wasting disease was psychological, the weight loss was a symptom not the actual disease itself.

Nowadays, I still find myself being dictated to by food and my love/hate relationship with it, am I in danger of a complete relapse? Eight years ago I went through a mini relapse and five years ago was when I almost died from my irresponsible behavior, but I am better now. Writing has helped me so much with dealing with my various afflictions; depression, anxiety and eating. I am much happier these days and I attribute a lot of my peace of mind to writing.

Here with 250 words less:

I haven’t written much about my challenges with anorexia nervosa, you would think that I would since it is as much a part of me and my mindset as is my need for approval. Eating disorders are so complicated, to describe and to diagnose, unfortunately. No one ever wakes up and says “today I will develop an eating disorder” It is so insidious in the making, it is frightening.Lack of knowledge and information can be dangerous. What made the information so dangerous is that I didn’t have the knowledge that I was suffering from an eating disorder and that my body image was so beyond warped that I was basically putting my life in danger.I weighed myself on a daily basis and the only thing that registered in my head was that I could lose five more pounds, this continued despite seeing the numbers, 105, 102, 96, 92 and so on. I was at my worst in London where I used to go to Euston Station to weigh myself at the scale, I had to translate stones into pounds and it worked out into 87 pounds. I’m 5 foot 6 so I was perilously skinny and I couldn’t see it. After London I had to go to France to see my family who hadn’t seen me since the summer before when I had weighed 125 pounds, needless to say that they were in complete shock. My tantine immediately took me to the doctor because they were convinced that I was suffering from some type of wasting disease, ironically they were correct, just the wasting disease was psychological, the weight loss was a symptom not the actual disease itself.

Nowadays, I still find myself being dictated to by food and my love/hate relationship with it. Writing has helped me so much with dealing with my various afflictions; depression, anxiety and eating. I am much happier these days and I attribute a lot of my peace of mind to writing.

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.